


Being Normal

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: All the couples everywhere, Clint has thoughts, Clint/Coulson is the home of fluff, F/F, F/M, M/M, Unashamed sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-25
Updated: 2012-04-25
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:03:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When it comes to the Avengers, a ‘normal’ relationship is about as abnormal as you can get. That, apparently, is what happens when superheroes date.</i>
</p>
<p>Or how a marksman and a SHIELD agent might seem like the normal ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Normal

When it comes to the Avengers, a ‘normal’ relationship is about as abnormal as you can get. That, apparently, is what happens when superheroes date.

Tony and Steve are absolutely insane. The two of them just can’t seem to keep quiet, whether they’re fighting or laughing or doing things Clint would rather not think about right now, about national symbols or playboys. Tony’s into explosions and robots and changing the course of human history (if you believe him), and Steve fought Nazis and skipped seventy years, so needless to say they’re pretty extreme together. As in, there is a separate part of the budget labelled ‘Cap-Iron Man Repairs’, which Tony may or may not know about and may or may not be supplying.

Pepper and Natasha are less extreme (fortunately) and more intense (less fortunately). Natasha rolls her eyes, because of course she knows what Clint’s thinking, and asks why men have such a problem with powerful women. Naturally there’s nothing Clint can say to that which will mean he can leave here alive, but fortunately at that point Pepper is between calls and prevents yet another Avengers-related attempted manslaughter. While Clint doesn’t know Pepper, beyond ‘friend of a team-mate’ and ‘girlfriend of a terrifying friend’, he tries to keep his distance and trust she won’t find him in the night.

Bruce and Betty have been through hell and it shows – in the exchange of glances, the moments when they so obviously _want_ to do something but have to hold back, in the calls Betty never answers and Bruce’s face when Betty can’t see. Clint can’t imagine what it’s like, and quite frankly doesn’t want to. It’s one of the reasons he finds it easier talking to the Hulk than the quiet science guy in the corner.

Thor and Jane seem normal enough, right up until you remember one’s a physicist who can have coffee with Tony or Natasha and look just as relaxed in either, and the other’s the Norse god of thunder. Besides, sometimes Thor gets this _look_ , and you don’t have to know the guy all that well to know that he’s not here anymore; he’s back on Asgard. It’s noticeable because the rest of the time Thor is just proper, over-the-top _happy_ , and Clint knows that Steve’s not the only one becoming a bit of an adrenaline junky via his boyfriend.

Point is, Clint is surrounded by these truly terrifying couples. It’s…actually a little bit intimidating. Definitely by the time Valentine’s Day rolls around and Fury finds it necessary to not only give a briefing but also insist on timetables and strategies and everything else that shouldn’t be appropriate but really sort is.

It’s great. It is. That they all have something that powerful. They seem happy, when they’re not angsting, or fighting. (Surprisingly – or not – Pepper and Natasha win ‘worst break up ever’ hands down, not only for collateral damage but also length of time before mutually agreeing never to speak of it again, whereas Steve and Tony have only ever managed about twelve hours before they just seem to burn out.)

Still.

There’s the TV; there’s popcorn; there’s DVDs. More to the point, there is a man with whom Clint has never engaged in destiny-affirming declarations of love, or base-destroying fights, or complicated manoeuvrings around cultures while dealing with the shattering of your family. The closest thing they have to a problem is Clint defaulting to ‘Coulson’ rather than ‘Phil’, but then, Coulson calls him ‘Barton’ all the time, unless they’re at that point where they could call each other anything and it wouldn’t really register.

There’s nothing keeping them apart; and technically, if they ever did break up, there would be nothing driving them back together beyond, you know, normal stuff.

That’s it. It’s normal. Hell, they even hooked up when Coulson, of all things, just _asked him out_ over the comm during a particularly slow day of waiting for the target to show up (she didn’t) (coffee was good though). It was hands-down the most unprofessional thing Coulson’s ever done, which gives Clint this small glow of pride, even if his bad influence is nothing compared to Tony’s, if Fury’s complaints about his relationship with Cap are anything to go by.

(“Your life is boring,” Tony informs him. This might have been more convincing if they hadn’t been sheltering from alien laser blasts at the time.)

They’re not flashy. They’re not exciting. They’re just them.

And Clint can’t stop the warm glow of pride that while his boyfriend most definitely could break every bone in his body, he doesn’t.

Apparently the world’s greatest marksman and one of SHIELD’s best agents in the last twenty years (Coulson can be surprisingly modest) is what passes for the most normal relationship around here.

Which just goes to show that sometimes normality can be _amazing_.


End file.
